What's your favourite Beatles album?

KungPao · 19-02-2019 1:43am #1

Tough one. I think I'd have to say The Best of the Beatles.

pleas advice · 19-02-2019 1:49am

Wings, the band the Beatles could have been

IamtheWalrus · 19-02-2019 1:56am

Hard to look past devil’s banquet tbf

Your Face · 19-02-2019 2:01am

The album of obscure 'b' sides only I and a few others have heard.

It's very underrated as you'd expect. Some would classify it as seminal.

nostro · 19-02-2019 2:03am

Ringo the 4th

PARlance · 19-02-2019 2:15am

Definitely Maybe

19-02-2019 2:16am

mzungu · 19-02-2019 2:20am

It changes depending on my mood. But really it's a pick between Revolver, Sgt. Peppers, The White Album and Abbey Road.

sabat · 19-02-2019 2:23am

Ipso · 19-02-2019 2:34am

pleas advice wrote: »

Wings, the band the Beatles could have been

Jet!

Arghus · 19-02-2019 3:45am

Tough one. Probably The White Album; it's just got so much quality. But really everything from Rubber Soul onward is fairly unbeatable.

19-02-2019 3:56am

The Beatles were sh1te, they didn't even play their own instruments and John was a wife/child beater. The Monkees is where it's at, I'm a believer!

Realt Dearg Sec · 19-02-2019 4:11am

Deleted User wrote: »

The Beatles were sh1te, they didn't even play their own instruments and John was a wife/child beater. The Monkees is where it's at, I'm a believer!

That's not even Michael nesmith's real hat.

Yamanoto · 19-02-2019 7:45am

All you need is cash

facehugger99 · 19-02-2019 8:18am

The White Album?

The Sh;te Album more like.

Seriously though, Revolver.

Hector Savage · 19-02-2019 8:35am

None,
All of them are sh1te, like the Beatles - overrated rubbish.

Cryptopagan · 19-02-2019 9:51am

Probably Revolver, but for me there's not really one best Beatles album. Rubber Soul sees them reaching their peak but not quite there yet. George's droning sitar numbers from Revolver and Sgt Pepper should have been consigned to a solo album nobody would listen to anymore. The White Album is a lot of fun, but there's loads of throwaway stuff on there (and I detest While My Guitar Gently Sleeps). The second half of Abbey Road is sublime, but side one is lumbered with two of their worst tracks, Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Octopus's Garden.

JupiterKid · 19-02-2019 9:56am

Revolver by a country mile, followed by the White Album and Rubber Soul.

Revolver was at the mid point in the Beatles’ career and represented all that was best in the group, evolving as they were from Beatlemania pop stars to introspective serious music artists.

Sergeant Pepper is good but way overrated by the critics and fans.

andekwarhola · 19-02-2019 9:58am

Revolver

chakotha · 19-02-2019 10:07am

Probably Abbey Road.

Deebles McBeebles · 19-02-2019 10:44am

All of them. Greatest band ever.

John DoeReMi · 19-02-2019 10:53am

Hector Savage wrote: »

None,
All of them are sh1te, like the Beatles - overrated rubbish.

There's no shortage of I Hate The Beatles websites out there for cool, discerning, brave iconoclasts like yourself Sir. Why don't you f*ck off to one of them and leave us to our Fabs love in ?

topper75 · 19-02-2019 11:06am

The diversity of material on the White Album blew my mind in the early 90s when I was lent it at school.
How much more mind blowing it must have been for people a few decades earlier.
Stiff competition, but white album wins.

murpho999 · 19-02-2019 11:08am

Waiting for someone to post "The Beatles are overrated".

valoren · 19-02-2019 11:09am

Number 8...*belch*
Number 8...*belch*
Number 8...*belch*
Number 8...*belch*
Number 8...*belch*

ohnonotgmail · 19-02-2019 11:10am

Goodshape · 19-02-2019 11:15am

White Album – some of the best they've done, but some relative stinkers too. Great overall package though.

or

Abbey Road – quality from start to finish.

fryup · 19-02-2019 11:21am

Rubber Soul

it has the right balance of 60's pop combined with indian/eastern overtones

Liam McPoyle · 19-02-2019 11:28am

For a relatively short career span their output was nothing short of staggering. They are essentially responsible for rock and Metal as we know it. The best band of all time.

orourkeda1977 · 19-02-2019 11:40am

Hector Savage wrote: »

None,
All of them are sh1te, like the Beatles - overrated rubbish.

Definitely the most overrated musical act in history.

orourkeda1977 · 19-02-2019 11:41am

Liam McPoyle wrote: »

For a relatively short career span their output was nothing short of staggering. They are essentially responsible for rock and Metal as we know it. The best band of all time.

The beatles are responsible for metal?

Maybe I'm missing something here but I cant see how Hey Jude developed into Enter Sandman

storker · 19-02-2019 11:41am

Hector Savage wrote: »

None,
All of them are sh1te, like the Beatles - overrated rubbish.

I wouldn't say rubbish, but definitely overrated. Small Faces/Yardbirds/Stones for me.

Goodshape · 19-02-2019 12:00pm

orourkeda1977 wrote: »

The beatles are responsible for metal?

Maybe I'm missing something here but I cant see how Hey Jude developed into Enter Sandman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk1hCSA89fc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAe2Q_LhY8g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huR__xAcUQs

Liam McPoyle · 19-02-2019 12:42pm

orourkeda1977 wrote: »

The beatles are responsible for metal?

Maybe I'm missing something here but I cant see how Hey Jude developed into Enter Sandman

Ozzy Osbourne has gone on record and said that hearing The Beatles made him want to be in a band. Sabbath are, for my money at least, the first real heavy metal band. Sabbath have been consistently cited as an influence for thousands of metal bands. Without The Beatles then Ozzy may not have gotten into music. We'll never know for certain of course but their influence is without question.

Wibbs · 19-02-2019 12:42pm

orourkeda1977 wrote: »

The beatles are responsible for metal?

Maybe I'm missing something here but I cant see how Hey Jude developed into Enter Sandman

Well I'd not go so far as to suggest they're directly responsible for metal O, that is a child of many fathers. Indeed I'd be dubious of claiming their direct influence in later genres. I'd regard them much more as predictors of future genres. And they did it from the very top of the mainstream while they were at it.

As topper75 noted looking back much of their stuff can now seem out there for the time, but at the time when they were current nobody was close to them as far as sheer diversity in music goes, and while making so many so songs "catchy" and popular.

Take a single like Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane from 1967. Double A sided, which itself was "new" for the time. So much so that the charts collated the sales separately and they missed out on number one because of it. And promo films(in colour) IE music videos for both songs. If you were listening to records in 1967 you would simply have never heard anything like it before. It was an entirely new soundscape, yet still approachable. Go back to the Revolver album a year previously and you had the Indian stuff and you had songs like Eleanor Rigby and Tomorrow Never Knows. The former a string quartet and written in an odd scale, the latter so out there it predicts stuff like the Chemical Brothers would do decades later.

Take a song like Jealous Guy. Released later as a solo track, but written by Lennon in the Beatles days. It's written in the pentatonic, that is very basically the black keys on a piano and the scale used by eastern music(he wrote it in India), yet it doesn't sound "eastern" at all and works as a "pop song". Vanishingly few songwriters could pull that kinda thing off. And there two such in the same band, three by the end.

Hector Savage · 19-02-2019 2:57pm

John DoeReMi wrote: »

There's no shortage of I Hate The Beatles websites out there for cool, discerning, brave iconoclasts like yourself Sir. Why don't you f*ck off to one of them and leave us to our Fabs love in ?

This is AH, just giving my opinion, if it were a Music or Beatles thread I wouldn't post.

looksee · 19-02-2019 3:05pm

White Album (Blackbird especially). I had a White Album, when it first came out. I broke one of the records almost immediately. Very sad.

trashcan · 19-02-2019 3:15pm

storker wrote: »

I wouldn't say rubbish, but definitely overrated. Small Faces/Yardbirds/Stones for me.

That's ok, you're entitled to be wrong.

The Kinks were better than all of the above on your list, never mind the Beatles. Incidentally, while the Beatles were undoubtedly the band of the sixties, in my view anyway, they didn't produce the best song of the decade for my money. That award goes to Ray Davies/ The Kinks and "Waterloo Sunset."

Favourite Beatles album would be Revolver by the way.

Birneybau · 19-02-2019 3:18pm

Deleted User wrote: »

The Beatles were sh1te, they didn't even play their own instruments and John was a wife/child beater. The Monkees is where it's at, I'm a believer!

The missus said we were going to see the Monkees in Switzerland. I told her no fcuking way.

And then I saw her face,

Now I'm in Geneva.

Birneybau · 19-02-2019 3:21pm

And as Wibbs said above, this could be dropped into a Chemical Bros' set and nobody would blink an eye.

Released in 1966!

Lady Spangles · 19-02-2019 3:26pm

Tough choice for me. But it's between Revolver and the White Album. Really love Rubber Soul as well, though.

Irish Guitarist · 19-02-2019 3:37pm

For anyone that says they're overrated, I'd like to know what's overrated about them? As in something that makes sense rather than saying "they're shite". What were they rated for that they didn't do as well as is claimed?

While you're at it name another song from 1967 or before that has as much going on as Strawberry Fields Forever. There's more happening in it than there is in the average twenty minute Yes song. Among many other instruments George Harrison plays a swarmandal on it. Name another song by British or American musicians from the same time period that uses a swarmandal. Or even try telling me what a swarmandal is without Googling it. And that's just one tiny part of the song.

Even among Beatles 'fans' there's the cliche that their early music was a load of balls. Try playing something like Please Please Me on guitar though and you'll see how complicated the chords are.

Deebles McBeebles · 19-02-2019 3:43pm

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Even among Beatles 'fans' there's the cliche that their early music was a load of balls. Try playing something like Please Please Me on guitar though and you'll see how complicated the chords are.

Always wished I had started learning guitar by exclusively playing Beatles songs instead of whatever the music du jour was. Great band for training your fingers to be that bit more stretchy.

thehairygrape · 19-02-2019 3:46pm

First album I ever bought out of my own pocket money was Let it be, so soft spot for that in spite of Phil Spector. Late to the party I know&#55357;&#56836;. White album too inconsistent to stand as best album. Some sublime moments but a few I could do without. Revolver of course a better album, but cliche or no, Sgt Peppers still the best album start to finish.

Cryptopagan · 19-02-2019 3:51pm

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

While you're at it name another song from 1967 or before that has as much going on as Strawberry Fields Forever. There's more happening in it than there is in the average twenty minute Yes song. Among many other instruments George Harrison plays a swarmandal on it. Name another song by British or American musicians from the same time period that uses a swarmandal. Or even try telling me what a swarmandal is without Googling it. And that's just one tiny part of the song.

I agree with the overall thrust of your post, but 1967 was the height of psychedelia and there was all sorts of wonderfully complicated pop music being produced. It was also the year of Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Hendrix's Are You Experienced, and of the Beach Boy's aborted Smile album.

Wibbs · 19-02-2019 3:53pm

Birneybau wrote: »

And as Wibbs said above, this could be dropped into a Chemical Bros' set and nobody would blink an eye.

Released in 1966!

And that's another thing, their truly unreal pace of change and innovation. That above wacky song was recorded just one year after the song Help! was recorded(a very Beatles type song, albeit going beyond the usual boy/girl thing). A year later they were going "psychedelic" and then a year after that while everyone else was still on the psychedelic train they wheel out the double disk White album which has all sorts of musical styles on it. Funny enough they only recorded one proper Blues song(Yer Blues. Not exactly pushing the boat out on that title). Then we went "back to basics" in what would be the Let it be album, then for one last time less than a year after that got back into the studio for Abbey Road which is different again.

Including lots of synthesisers. In 1969. Thing is you don't tend to notice them, as they blended them musically rather than as a stylistic thing(unlike the majority who tried them at the time). Here Comes The Sun is stuffed with synths but its not thought of as a synth heavy song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUNqsfFUwhY

And throughout they were involved with feature films, videos, massive tours, regular single releases, most of which weren't on albums until the latter years, starting a record company(and fashion shop), even doing a global satellite gig, Lennon even found time to write and publish two books, and they changed the landscape of what a "pop" band could do. All in little more than seven years from the first time they walked into a recording studio to when they split up. Some bands have taken that long between albums.

Wibbs · 19-02-2019 4:02pm

Cryptopagan wrote: »

the Beach Boy's aborted Smile album.

Funny enough the Beatles saw the Beach Boys as their biggest competition and influence and vice versa. Not the Stones or any others that were around at the time. One of the reasons given for Smile going south was Brian Wilson had heard some early takes of Sgt Pepper songs and it was another pressure on him, as he reckoned they'd beat him to the punch.

mzungu · 19-02-2019 4:16pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Funny enough the Beatles saw the Beach Boys as their biggest competition and influence and vice versa. Not the Stones or any others that were around at the time. One of the reasons given for Smile going south was Brian Wilson had heard some early takes of Sgt Pepper songs and it was another pressure on him, as he reckoned they'd beat him to the punch.

With that said, there really is no comparison between the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Macca wanted to better Pet Sounds with Sgt. Peppers, and they succeeded. Even Brian Wilson on top of his game does not come close. I say this as somebody that likes the Beach Boys a lot and I wouldn't be an ultra die hard Beatles fan either.

I think things with Wilson were fairly dire in general, and the stress in general of the music industry (not to mention his dysfunctional family) meant that even if he had never made it big, he would have had the exact same mental health issues.

Steve F · 19-02-2019 4:29pm

I like the Vinyl copy I have of the White Album
Serial number 0005. Apparently John got 0001 cause he shouted loudest according to Paul

Gwynplaine · 19-02-2019 4:35pm

Hector Savage wrote: »

None,
All of them are sh1te, like the Beatles - overrated rubbish.

Just because you don't like them, it doesn't mean they're rubbish.
I don't like them either, a few of their songs are alright, but that's it.

Goodshape · 19-02-2019 4:38pm

Steve F wrote: »

I like the Vinyl copy I have of the White Album
Serial number 0005.

Really? That's very cool if true. Pics?

Apparently John got 0001 cause he shouted loudest according to Paul

Ringo had it. Sold for $910k a few years ago – https://www.nme.com/news/music/the-beatles-27-1205199

Edit:: I'm assuming the 0005 claim is not at all true, as the article above states "The first four pressings of the album were all in possession of The Beatles, while copy No. 0000005 sold at an auction in 2008 for a little less than $30,000 (£20,000)."

What's your favourite Beatles album?

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